Remembering football legend, John Motson

THIS week I would like to pass on my own reminisces of John Motson, the greatly admired football match commentator for the BBC who sadly died last week. I first met John when as chairman of the Reading Referees Association, I invited him to be our guest speaker.

Perhaps as to be expected the hall was packed with members.

I still recall one comment that he made “referees and television commentators have one thing in common when faced with an incident on the pitch.

We will only have split seconds to make up our mind and sometimes we are going to get it wrong”

John was known for his list of statistics which he researched himself. Mark Lawrenson, who often shared a commentary box with John, said everything had to be 100% correct and he never got it wrong.

Perhaps I am the only person to correct him, although I must admit that it wasn’t his fault.

The original manager of Premier League’s referees, before Mike Riley, but who’s name I forget, told his assistant referees not to flag for offside unless there was day light between the attacking and defending players.

After hearing this John criticised an assistant referee for flagging when only half of an attacker was in front of the second last defender.

I pointed out in my weekly column that the assistant referee was quite correct. The law states a player is in an offside position if any part of his head, body or feet is in the opponent’s half, nearer the opponent’s goal line than the ball and the second last opponent.

A week later I received a phone call from John. I ought to point out that if I criticised anyone in my column about a point of law, I send them a copy as I don’t want anyone thinking I am going behind their back.

John told me that on receiving it he showed his thoroughness by contacting a FIFA referee who told him that I was right.

Some weeks later I got another phone call from John inviting me and my wife to a dinner at Bletchley for a presentation of a medal to a BBC colleague from the FA for fifty years of refereeing.

As he knew I too was a long serving referee he thought I would be interested. But that is another story.